


so far down Queer Street that he may never find his way back again

by ThamesNymph



Category: Queer as Folk (UK)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:28:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25290913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThamesNymph/pseuds/ThamesNymph
Summary: Late Victorian AU. Vincent Tyler is a scholarship student at Oxford, struggling with his feelings towards other men, especially his new friend, the clever, charismatic, rich and devastatingly attractive Stuart Jones. Stuart introduces Vince to a secret life of pleasure and vice, but scandal threatens to erupt when Stuart seduces fifteen-year-old Nathan. Stuart’s actions have the potential to ruin his future, and make Vince’s close friendship with him dangerous for both of them.
Relationships: Stuart Alan Jones/Nathan Maloney, Stuart Alan Jones/Original Male Character(s), Stuart Alan Jones/Vince Tyler, Vince Tyler/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	1. Tuesday, the Shelley Memorial

**Author's Note:**

> The story takes place in 1893, two years before the Wilde trials, so both people in authority and other students at Oxford are rather relaxed about same-sex intimacy. Stuart and Vince are about 20 for the purposes of this story, and they just meet for the first time at Oxford. Vince is a scholarship student from a lower-middle-class Manchester family, who doesn’t fit in with the elite crowd at Oxford. Stuart is the son of a very wealthy newly created Irish peer, he’s been to public school and knows many influential families. Vince agonises over his attraction to men because it’s looked upon extremely negatively in his social class. Stuart is much more relaxed about his own attraction to men because of his public school education and generally more upper-class background, where such relationships are often condoned, especially in younger men. Nathan (who’s going to appear later) is a student at Magdalen College School. Instead of Doctor Who, Vince is into Sherlock Holmes. Stuart is a bit less promiscuous than he was on the show, but only because he lacks opportunities and there is a curfew.
> 
> Title of the story is from ‘The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place’.

Vince knew that couldn’t lie to himself any more on a rainy October afternoon in front of the new Shelley Memorial. Before that day, he had envisioned nebulous pictures of a future as a successful barrister, with a young wife waiting to meet him when he returned from work, a young wife whom he loved but whose face, in his pictures of that future, remained in misty obscurity. But after that afternoon, he had to admit to himself that he would never see that face, because there would be no wife. There was no woman in the world he would ever bring himself to wed.

He stood in front of the statue, his eyes drinking in its lush beauty; the powerful body rendered helpless by a death that looked like sleep, the head flung back, the thick hair swept from the brow, the mouth open just a sliver. Vince walked slowly around it, his eyes tracing every curve of the white marble, imagining living flesh in its place. It was perfect, every part of the body was absolutely, utterly beautiful, at the very limit of the possibilities of mortal loveliness. He became aware that he was lingering behind the statue for an unnecessarily long time when he suddenly realised that someone else had come in. Involuntarily, Vince blushed and moved away, irrationally angry at the intruder into his private reverie. He kept his eyes averted, not wanting to look at whoever it was, when the man spoke to him.

‘Doesn’t look half bad, does he, for a chap who’s been drowned for a few days?’

Vince looked at the speaker, and that was when he knew. He had never seen anyone so… well, not handsome, not attractive, although he was that, but utterly magnetic. Unlike the statue before them, this man was somehow bursting with life. He was slightly taller than Vince, though this was no achievement, and slim, with deliberately untidy black curls, clever, twinkling grey eyes, a long sharp nose, and a knowing, delicious smirk on his lips. He was clearly also an undergraduate, probably around Vince’s own age. Vince felt as if the man was looking not at him, but into him, as if he could read every thought Vince had just been having, as if he knew everything, saw everything, and as if the sight and knowledge gave him the greatest pleasure.

‘Yes,’ Vince stammered, ‘the – the work really is splendid, the attention to detail is phenomenal – ‘ he broke off because he realised that he was in danger of babbling.

The man turned his dark, laughing eyes to the statue and deliberately traced the curve of the hips and the buttocks with his gaze.

‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘phenomenal.’ He spoke slowly and knowingly, with a world of meaning behind his words. Vince did not know what to make of him or what to do.

The stranger turned back to him abruptly.

‘Stuart Jones,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘I’m at Magdalen.’

‘Vincent Tyler,’ Vince said, feeling the slender, strong fingers close over his. He wished they would never let go. There were several rings on the hand he was holding. He remembered, just in time, to add, ‘BNC,’ and reluctantly let go of Stuart’s hand.

‘Well, if you’ve had enough of the gorgeous Shelley, what do you say to some tea?’

‘Alright,’ Vince said dazedly, feeling that he was prepared to follow Stuart to the ends of the earth and back if he asked. Or if he didn’t ask.

As they emerged onto the High Street, they passed a bookshop that had numbers of _The Strand_ on display.

‘Hang on a moment,’ Vince said, ‘would you mind if I looked in?’

They went in together and Vince snatched up the new issue of _The Strand_ , leafing through it.

‘What are you looking for?’ Stuart asked.

‘There!’ Vince said, ‘new Sherlock Holmes story. Do you read them?’

‘No.’

‘You must, they’re awfully exciting. Conan Doyle has a splendid sense of adventure, and when you read them you just feel that the most exciting things are going to happen to you at any second. And the way Watson writes about Holmes – ‘ Again, Vince stopped abruptly, realising that he was talking with excessive enthusiasm. 

He looked at Stuart apprehensively, and was surprised to see a gentle, slightly puzzled twisted smile on his face. His eyes looked so gentle and so interested.

‘Go on,’ Stuart urged.

‘Well, you’ll have to read them for yourself,’ Vince said.

‘Which should I read?’ Stuart asked. ‘Would they have it here?’

‘Oh, I can lend you some, I’ve got all the issues with the Holmes stories. If you want.’

‘Of course,’ Stuart said as Vince payed for the magazine and they left the shop. ‘Let’s skip the tea and you can lend me that story, eh?’

Vince realised that he had just impulsively invited this stranger to his room, which he wasn’t sure was the done thing. But he had to go through with it now, so they crossed the High Street and made their way to Vince’s rooms. Vince was immediately ashamed of them; it was a bad room, of course, they had given him a rotten room, being a scholarship student, and he had no furniture and few pictures to decorate it with. But Stuart didn’t seem to mind; he looked at the bookshelves and ran his finger over the issues of _The Strand_ standing there in an orderly row.

‘You really do have them all, don’t you?’ Stuart said. ‘So, which one should I read?’

‘This one, “The Red-Headed League”.’

‘Thanks,’ Stuart said, gazing meditatively at the cover of the magazine and running his fingers over the pages absently. Vince felt slightly hypnotised by the slender, nimble fingers. ‘You’re from Manchester, aren’t you?’ Stuart asked, startling Vince back to reality.

‘Yes,’ Vince said, wishing he wouldn’t blush again. His accent was causing him far more embarrassment than he had been prepared for.

‘I like the accent,’ Stuart said with a little grin. ‘Nice to have someone else who doesn’t speak as if their accent was mass produced and bought in a department store.’

Vince had noticed the charming Irish lilt in Stuart’s voice, but he rather suspected Stuart of purposely exaggerating it. 

Stuart was looking at him as if appraising him, meditatively biting at his nails. The dark eyes were fixed on him with uncertainty, then Stuart seemed to come to a decision.

‘We’re having a bit of a party on Friday,’ he said, rather abruptly, ‘we’ve paid for the entire second parlour of a bar, so there’ll be quite a crowd there and it’ll be private. Here’s the address,’ he pulled out a card and scribbled an address on it with a pencil, handing it to Vince. ‘Come if you like, at around five.’

‘I shall certainly be very happy to,’ Vince answered, feeling so elated at the invitation that he thought he might either float through the window or pass out from sheer glee as most of the blood in his body seemed to flood into his heart from excitement.

‘Well, I’ll see you then, Vince,’ Stuart said, and gave him the most mischievous, radiant, beguiling smile Vince had ever seen. Then he was gone, and Vince realised that he was in a haze of intense happiness because Stuart had called him Vince. Not ‘Tyler’ or even ‘Vincent’, but ‘Vince’. How did he know that was what he liked to be called? It seemed to him that there was some magical connection between him and Stuart, enabling Stuart to read his thoughts and understand him without words. 

And he had been invited to a party, he who had as yet only been mocked for his accent or his ignorance of customs and traditions by the more popular scholars and had found welcome only with hard-working scholarship students like himself, whom he in turn found dry and boring, as if they were double their own age. He had not yet gone drinking with anyone, or in fact done anything more interesting than the obligatory punt down the Cherwell with a fellow who had made such a bad job of it that their boat had capsized. Vince had started to think that career at Oxford was going to be a dull round of study, unrelieved by friendship or entertainment, when suddenly, Stuart Jones had come into his life and, he was already sure, changed everything.

But as the glow of the encounter faded, Vince leaned back against the wall and slid down it with a groan. There was no escaping it; he desired Stuart, as he had never desired anyone. The mere thought that his copy of _The Strand_ was now in Stuart’s hands, that it was being handled by those long, slender fingers, perhaps held against his side as he walked, drove Vince almost mad with lust. The idea of physical contact with Stuart, even though the intervening medium of the magazine, was nearly overwhelming. He had hoped that this would pass, that, as his mother always hoped, in a few years he would find a pretty girl and marry her, be a successful barrister with a lovely wife and more children than he could count. He knew now that his mother’s vision of his future would never become a reality. He could never marry. He had, in school and with his friends, seen dirty books with extensive illustrations, heard smutty stories, even attended a performance by a French dancer whose repertoire was far removed from modesty, and none of it had excited him a fraction as much as Stuart’s smile. He had never intimated to his friends what he felt. They had words for men like that; for men like him. Vince buried his head in his hands in shame and horror. He just wanted an ordinary life, he just wanted to be like other men, wanted to be happy the way other men were happy.

He did not know what to make of Stuart. It had almost seemed as if he was being deliberately provocative, yet that was impossible. Vince thought that he must be reading things into the encounter that were in no way intended. Yet how to explain the lustful gaze of those eyes as they swept so pointedly over the statue? Surely Stuart had not meant anything by it, surely it was Vince’s own ungovernable thoughts that assigned to him filthy and delightful motives? 

What on earth could he make of Stuart Jones?


	2. The Party

During the next few days, Vince made a few discreet inquiries about Stuart Jones. It appeared that his new friend had something of a reputation; people spoke of him either with a frenzied enthusiasm, or with mysterious disapproval, and sometimes a mixture of both. 

‘Listen, Tyler,’ said Baddington, a third-year student who saw himself as taking youngsters under his wing, ‘a word of advice. Stay away from Jones.’

‘Why? He seemed a nice fellow.’

‘There are _things said_ about him,’ Baddington said pointedly, in a discreetly lowered voice.

‘What things?’ Vince demanded.

‘Things that oughtn’t to be said of a gentleman,’ Baddington responded, with such indescribable pomposity that Vince had to forcibly restrain himself from laughing.

‘He’s a terrific fellow,’ was the response of a second-year student, ‘never a dull moment with Stuart Jones.’ And he proceeded to relate an incident when a third-year student had been rude to Stuart and he had, in retaliation, discovered that the man had an unnatural terror of mice, and spread a rumour that the college’s dining hall was infested with them. Stuart then brought a mouse in with him to dinner one night, and released it to scuttle over the other man’s arm, causing him to scream in abject terror and the rest of those present to almost collapse with laughter. Stuart's victim had not been seen in the dining hall since, and had been spotted erecting a barricade of mousetraps around his room. 

The purely factual information that Vince did manage to gather was that Stuart was the son of a recently created Irish peer, who had accumulated extraordinary wealth through lead mining, and with it, significant political influence. Stuart was known to some of the most aristocratic men at the University because he had attended Harrow, where he had apparently achieved great popularity.

Vince found that just the act of asking people about Stuart, of speaking about him, was almost addictively pleasurable, and he wanted to keep talking about him, returning to the topic obsessively in his own thoughts. Any conversation that did not have Stuart as its subject seemed to him dull, no matter how much he attempted to rouse himself to interest. He relived their short meeting again and again, seeing every smallest detail of Stuart’s appearance, now free to stare with the unseen eye of memory at the clever, sharp face, at the winning smile, to listen again and again to the light, suggestive voice. The thought that he would be seeing Stuart again on Friday seemed like the promise of heaven.

Friday afternoon finally arrived, and Vince headed to the public house the address of which Stuart had given him. He arrived twenty minutes early, and forced himself to turn down a side street and walk about for half an hour, looking up at a nearby clock every few minutes. Time seemed to refuse to progress, and the half hour seemed to stretch to several millennia. He supposed that coming at exactly five would reveal his eagerness, but he could not force himself to be more than ten minutes late. He went into the bar, inquired about the party in the private parlour, and was directed upstairs. From outside the door of the room, he could hear voices and laughter, telling him that the party was, if not in full swing, then at least well under way. He paused, straightened his tie, checked his clothes one last time, and knocked on the door.

There was no answer. He knocked louder, and a hush fell inside. After a few seconds, he heard, to his surprise, a bolt withdrawn, and the door was opened by a young man he had never seen before. Everyone in the room was unnaturally still and they were all looking at him with surprise and even some hostility. Everyone, that is, except Stuart, who leapt up from his chair and came over. To Vince’s astonishment, Stuart put an arm around his shoulders with one of his quick, assured movements, and drew him into the room.

‘Vince, glad you came,’ Stuart said, breaking the silence, as the young man who had opened the door closed it again and drew the bolt. ‘Everyone, this is Vincent Tyler.’

‘Um, hello,’ Vince mumbled. Stuart’s arm was still around his shoulders, and he felt dazed. Everyone was behaving in the most extraordinary way. Why had they all fallen so silent at his entrance? Why the suspicious glances? And why did those glances change to welcome as soon as Stuart put his arm around him?

Stuart, meanwhile, guided him towards a tall, golden-haired young man with all the appearance of a Greek god.

‘Vince, this is Clover,’ he said.

‘James Cloverleigh,’ the young man said, holding out his hand, which Vince shook in bemusement.

‘Well, off you go,’ Stuart said with a grin, giving Vince a little push towards Cloverleigh as he withdrew his arm and returned to the crowd he had left to welcome Vince.

Vince took the opportunity to glance around. There were about twenty people there, all of them young men, most of them undergraduates, but a few whom he was not sure about. He noticed that many of those present seemed to be conversing in pairs and, as he noticed this, he also became aware that most were standing or sitting much closer to one another than was customary, leaning into one another, a hand resting upon an arm, or upon a knee. And then, to his complete astonishment, he saw a rather small, dark-haired young man climb into the lap of a red-head he was sitting next to, and commence to kiss him on the mouth. Vince almost fell down in shock and fascination. It dawned on him that all these men were… well, had the same preferences as he did himself. 

‘Are you alright, old man?’ Cloverleigh asked, leaning forward and putting a too-solicitous hand on Vince’s arm. Vince suddenly became aware of how close Cloverleigh was, and how boldly his eyes looked straight at Vince in unmistakable invitation. This terrified and thrilled him in equal measure. He had to leave. He couldn’t handle this. This was the most delightful, sinful, obscene situation he had ever found himself in, and he had to leave now.

‘I – em – yes,’ Vince managed, ‘would you excuse me for just a moment?’

He sought for Stuart in the crowd and saw, to his dismay, that he was sitting with his arm draped around the neck of a slender, pale young man with curly brown hair and large, appealing brown eyes, and they were talking in hushed and dulcet undertones. Vince’s first thought was that he ought to simply flee, but he felt that he had to say something to Stuart. And besides, Stuart drew him like a magnet. He made his way over.

‘Stuart,’ he called, feeling foolish at interrupting, but Stuart gave him his attention immediately.

‘Yes, what is it?’ he asked.

‘I’m sorry, I just remembered, I have to leave, there’s a dinner I have to attend, I – ’

Stuart looked back at his doe-eyed companion and heaved a theatrical sigh. Then he put his finger to the young man’s lips.

‘Don’t move,’ he whispered to him, ‘don’t you dare even speak to anyone else.’

Then he stood up and steered Vince to the comparative privacy of a dark corner.

‘I’m sorry, I have to leave but I wanted to tell you before I left – ‘

‘Vince, shut up,’ Stuart said, good-naturedly. ‘Now, what is this all about? Don’t tell me I’m wrong about you, I’m never wrong.’

‘Wrong? About me? What do you mean?’

Stuart stepped nearer to him, dark and close and tempting. His eyes glowered at Vince and his voice was low, rasping. ‘You know exactly what I mean,’ he said, and Vince dropped his eyes. 

‘No,’ he whispered, ‘you’re not wrong.’

‘Now,’ Stuart went on, ‘I think I can guess. You don’t know what you’re doing, do you? Do you?’ He was insistent now, demanding an answer.

Mutely, Vince shook his head.

‘Don’t worry,’ Stuart assured him. ‘Clover knows exactly what he’s doing, just let him take the lead. Or don’t you like him?’

‘No, he’s fine, it’s just – ‘

‘Then what are you waiting for? Come on,’ Stuart said, taking him by the arm and leading him back to Cloverleigh. He put his hand on Cloverleigh’s shoulder and whispered something in his ear, then grinned conspiratorially over his shoulder at Vince and went back to his brown-haired young man.

‘Here, have some this wine, it’s damn good,’ Cloverleigh said with a little smile, pressing a glass into Vince’s hand. He drank, obediently.

Suddenly, he found it quite easy to talk to Cloverleigh, who was almost unbelievably good-looking, with sky-blue eyes and a powerful, graceful body. It turned out that he rowed for his college, and had, like Vince, an interest in architecture. After a few more glasses of wine, Cloverleigh moved closer to him, resting his hand casually on Vince’s arm.

‘You’re from Manchester, aren’t you?’ Cloverleigh said. ‘My family live in the North too.’

Before Vince had a chance to resentfully think that his family likely lived in a quite different North, in a palatial mansion with rooms bigger than Vince’s whole house, Cloverleigh said, softly, almost breathily, ‘I just adore your accent.’

‘Th – thank you,’ Vince mumbled.

Cloverleigh’s hand slid from his arm and onto his thigh, moving higher by imperceptible degrees. 

‘It’s lovely,’ Cloverleigh went on, ‘you’re lovely. Shhhh, don’t say anything,’ he breathed, and, leaning forward, kissed Vince on the mouth. 

Vince forgot his astonishment as he drowned in the sensation, drugged by it, opening his mouth without knowing he was doing so. He did not know how long they kissed, nor did he think of anything in the world while it was happening.

‘Stuart said you were a virgin,’ Cloverleigh whispered. ‘You are, aren’t you?’

So that was what Stuart had whispered to Cloverleigh before he left them to it. Vince felt himself blushing and nodded.

‘That’s so sweet,’ Cloverleigh said. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

‘Where to?’ Vince asked, allowing Cloverleigh to take control as Stuart had suggested.

‘We can go to my rooms.’

As they were leaving, Vince couldn’t stop himself looking over his shoulder for Stuart. There he was, with his brown-eyed boy, his fingers tracing the line of the other’s jaw. But when Vince looked at him, Stuart looked up and caught his eye, winking and nodding his encouragement. Jealousy flared up in Vince, and he would have given anything to take the place of the pale boy, to have Stuart run his hand along his jaw like that, even if that was all he did. He wanted Cloverleigh, but wretchedness was mixed with his desire as he followed Cloverleigh out.

They went to Cloverleigh’s rooms, where Vince found out that Stuart had been absolutely right, Cloverleigh knew _exactly_ what he was doing, and they spent the better part of several hours doing things that Vince had never even allowed himself to imagine. But although Cloverleigh (or Clover, as Vince began calling him at some point) was stunningly beautiful and seductive, Vince could not help but close his eyes and imagine that it was Stuart’s mouth, Stuart’s hands, Stuart’s body, could not help but imagine that he would open his eyes to find himself confronted by stormy grey-blue ones and that beguiling smirk. And at certain moments, he could almost believe it, almost slid fully under the seductive waters of this fantasy, drowning in desire at the thought.

**Author's Note:**

> The Shelley Memorial is 'new' because it was opened in 1893.


End file.
